XPRTNovice   Judges ⚖️

Hey there! This is a fun solo piano arrangement! I think it passes the bar for interpretation, and truly sounds like a single person performance, which is nice. I love all the little flourishes, but you also do a great job of keeping this very grounded in the source. The playing is well done. However, something is going on with the piano sample itself that's I think going to bring this below the bar - the good news is, I don't think it's very hard to fix. The left hand is muddy to my ear; we've got a TON of sound information in the 400-500-hz range and the 150hz range that's making this sound really bottom heavy. We're losing the brilliantly played right hand, because the left hand EQ isn't sculpted enough for us to hear all the detail. My gut is telling me that this piano is sampled and not live-recorded, but the problem I'm hearing is actually really endemic to recorded piano because you get the proximity effect of the sound bouncing off the lid of the piano and then back into the microphone at almost the same time the sound is coming off the strings. Honestly, I think some careful EQ carving will solve this problem right away - and, because you're giving more room to the space, you could then probably add in a touch of reverb without it going overboard. That's purely taste though; I like the drier performance, but would be curious of experimenting with something with just a bit more production behind it (literally just a speck of reverb.) However, if you try it before you EQ that mud out it will only exacerbate that problem. Great performance, great arrangement! Just needs a smidge of work in literally one department. NO (Please resubmit)

Hey, some really good stuff in here! The whole overall mood maintains the playfulness of the original with some fun interpretative elements all sprinkled throughout. Your mixing overall is on point. I think things are blended well, with some notable exceptions. The piano sits back too far in the mix once the rest of the instruments come in, and it's essentially the lead instrument. Yes, that silence is probably too long at 1:05, but that's easy to trim. I do like the effect you created there. I have to agree with proph that the whole piece could use a touch of room tone in order to get things to blend together, but I don't think it needs to be very much (and probably be restricted to the snare/cymb, piano, and strings) , and I am actually going to disagree on the non-human performance element of the piano. In this case - especially when you have the really fast solo going on at 2:20 - I kind of LIKE the mechanical, unrealistic performance in this context. To be clear I DO AGREE that the piece feels mechanical - I just think that in this context, it's actually kind of charming? Could some velocity adjustments work? Totally. Can it work without it? I think so, yes. The violin background is clashing for a brief moment at 2:23 - check that note because it rubs the solo the wrong way for just a second. The ending falls of a cliff. We need something else there, whether it's a climax out, or some sort of throwback to the beginning, but the piece just dies. After all the good work you did up to that point, I think the ending deserves a bit more attention. Overall, I think this piece is really, really close. NO (please resubmit)

I mean Ivan has a long history of absolute quality on this site, so his reputation precedes him despite my attempt to stay neutral. I wasn't disappointed. I do have a couple of comments that don't put it below the bar, but I think are worth mentioning. First, drumkit. When it's really exposed at the beginning, the samples sound like they're recorded in a box. Once it blends with the rest of the piece, it's fine (though I think it's a bit too precise, see my comment about the piano below as well.) I wasn't believing the piano here because it sounds very quantized at 2:45. Prog is perhaps the most precise of the metal subgenres, yes, but to me the drums and piano are really coming off mechanical in this piece. Organ solo really needs to come out at 3:00 - it's sweet, but very buried. Other than those nitpicks, solid. YES

Ahah, pretty cool interpretation turning this into a synthwave thing. I was digging it from the beginning. I will say that the saw-wavy kind of arp thing you've got going on for the first minute or so is sticking out to me. It could just use a little carving on the EQ around 2KHz I think, or push back in the mix. My ears were really fatigued by the time they got their first break at 1:00. I believe prohetik is saying the same thing above, saying that it's tough to hear the melody under "that arpeggiating instrument." I think all these elements are mixed together well; classic synthwave stuff. Your production is on point, though; it gels together nicely without the wall-of-sound that often comes with synthwave mixed poorly. Great job overall. However, whn the drop came back in at 1:35 is when I started thinking to myself that it was starting to sound a little repetitive. By the time 3:00 came around I was thinking to myself that there's only a few bars of music in this that are repeated in order to generate a piece that's 3 minutes long. When I went back and listened to it, I found that it was right; we have essentially just about 30 seconds of music here once you strip out the repetitions, so it's going to fall below the bar for me on arrangement. At 2:50 I was like "ah! finally some new stuff" and then the song just sort of ended. This needs another pass to address the repetition/copy paste. The source for this is EXTREMELY rich; you should definitely have no problem ideating some more variations with this and still keeping that synthwave feel. You've got the mixing down, other than my nitpicks above, but this needs more variety. NO (resubmit)

Hey! There's so much great stuff happening here, but unfortunately I don't think this passes the bar for interpretation. This follows the source almost note for note in every instrument, just swapping out some patches and changing the beat. At 1:05 we get a bit of a breakdown where we depart from the source for about 25 seconds before jumping right back in. I do want to laud some positives in this - the mixing is very tight. Your production is on point. I enjoy the choices you made from a sound perspective. This is great, because a lot of remixers, especially with something that has THIS many parts and intricacies, have a hard time getting them all to mesh properly. Your mixing ear is obviously very good here. No muddiness, nothing is too far forward, all the lead parts are functioning as lead parts, etc. The drums, which are complicated, really do sit nicely in the mix. You're a competent engineer - this just isn't interpretive enough to post on OCR. Definitely keep chugging!!! NO

I LOVE Fox Capture Plan, and this is an amazing nod to them. Extremely strong opening. Something is going on with the vibes (?) at :54 that make them sound like they're playing the wrong notes. Listening back, I wonder if it was maybe the piano that was doing the damage there, but there's definitely some notes clashing there. Decide which is the feature, clean up the notes, and pull whatever ISN'T the feature back. It's cool for the vibes to come out there, but have the piano performance fall back as well. Breakdown at 2:00 is awesome. 2:50 starts to sound really messy mixing wise. I get the idea of the chaos and it goes with Fox but it's not working here. We get too much going on at once, which is effective from an ARRANGEMENT standpoint, but the bass mud really comes in strong here and makes it less enjoyable to listen to. The bass needs some EQ trimming around 400hz-500hz because we're getting some wubs in there that make it sound not clean. FCP is a lot of things, but they're always neat and organized in their arrangement and mixing even when they're being chaotic. You can also add in some high freqs in there to get some air back in the bass, which will sound really nice int here. The drumset, particular the hi-hat and the snare, tend to steal the show too often. Both of those need to sit back in the mix better. I like the spatial panning you've done with the drums, though, it keeps everything nicely contained. One other persistent problem that I'm hearing from the piano is that we're getting a lot of left-hand banging. It dirties up the great playing on the right hand. I'm not totally sure how you tracked that, but there are parts where there's just an absolute hammer of a left hand going on, which contributes to the un-clean feeling I was talking about before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCAPQB-7ONU&list=PL8DzZtX89EQ_SbUVuxJbkGe1Zxxz4OJlx&index=3 Reincarnation linked above has a REALLY clean mix. Hear how absolutely distinct everything is? Not that we need an exact copy - your goal here isn't to BE FCP - but it's a great reference to mix to. I think a much stronger ending would NOT include that delay. Just slam that shit out. The delay felt not right to me. The arrangement here is killer. I really like it. You are totally encapsulating their vibe. But we need some work on the mixing before this is above the bar for me. NO (please resubmit)

Crazy loud all over the place. Lots of wall of sound, I feel like it's distorting quite a bit. Overall, though, I like the arrangement. It needs a mastering pass. The flute sample that comes in at around 1:15 actually made my head go backwards it was so forward. The piano at 2:00 is also piercingly loud, and to my ear almost all the cymbals sound like they're distorting (or perhaps they're running through some filter that makes them seem that way, but if the piece wasn't so wall of sound I wouldn't be thinking that.) There are so many great creative elements in here, and I think the groove is really cool. This doesn't feel repetitive or boring to me at all; it takes a source and does something interesting and new with it. My only beef with the arrangement is that it feels like we fall off a cliff at the end; we have no real climax to the piece, and then we just end - it almost comes off like you ran out of ideas. I do want to emphasize that this piece is cool as hell, but it needs another mix/mastering pass to fix the loudness issue. There's a lot more to play with in the soundscape there; move instruments R/L, automate some of the sound so that it's not all at one volume the whole time, etc. NO (resubmit)

I think it's absolutely fantastic how clear the improvements are here. I judged this last Sep and loved the arrangement but there were mixing issues and humanization issues with the samples. I'm not going to go over the bodhran issues, but I will say that I agree with them. That needs to back off and chill out and sit better in the mix. I do think there are still issues with particularly the attacks of the strings. If you found a cello player in our INCREDIBLE COMMUNITY I think this piece would really benefit from it, especially since it comes out so far in the mix. And it would solve a lot of the other problems you have with the samples. That's just a shortcut suggestion from me - get a human to do this. Humans are better at it. So. Fix the clipping, smooth out these attacks just a bit more (the best example I can give you is actually the violins in the beginning - do you hear how we have to wait in a slight moment of silence for them to come back in because it sounds like you're just using the basic attack setting on the arco? THAT's the kind of stuff that makes our brain go "fake" because humans don't play like that. Because these strings are so exposed, they take extra work to get right. It's ambitious, but you can do it. We're almost there. This piece is wonderful, I want you to understand that all 3 of us that just NOed this have said that with every vote we've given. We're giving you this feedback not because we don't like the piece, but because all of us can see its potential, and, by proxy, YOUR potential to really bring this piece to a new level with just a few more tweaks. NO (resubmit)

I've never heard the old version! So this is is a PURE VOTE unlike these other TAINTED judges. I feel like I listen to so many remixes where you have your work cut out for you just because you pick a source that is really difficult to develop. With this, you really only have like 3 notes to work with, and even in the original the 3 notes don't even necessarily make sense with each other. So you're coming from a really hard place, here. But then to try to turn it into a 5 minute long dance piece. Man. I feel like I am just hearing those same three notes over and over again for the whole piece, in the same octave, with the same lead, in the same place. I don't even really get a break from that repetitive lead until 3:35. And even then it's a short break before we're back in the carousel of those 3 notes, again, and again. The only thing that makes me hesitate on giving this a NO is the idea that the repetition is kind of genre-appropriate in its own way. But even when you're comparing it to trance music, this is still even a bit too much where by the end of the piece I am starting to feel physically anxious because I've just been hearing those 3 notes for five full minutes. The production is nice and clean. Many dance remixes like this fail in the drum department - you do not. The beats are innovative, varied, and the sections are fun in their own right, but we're about 2 full minutes too long with a source that's only about three seconds. NO

Aw, this opening was awesome. Love the mission control VO and the ambiance. I DON'T particularly enjoy the way that VO is mixed in at 1:36. I understand that you want to bring that to the forefront, but the old-radio EQing is making it grating to hear. I think you could probably tone that down to fit it in the mix better without losing its presence. that may be because it's a different sample/different recording. You're fighting against the natural bitcrushing that comes from transmission. Guitar solo is cool as shit at 3:10. I actually think it could probably stand to come out a bit more - or, perhaps, what I am hearing is the snare drum being a bit too out in front. I was going to comment on it before the guitar came in, but now that I'm hearing it in line with the guitar, I just think that snare needs to move back a bit in the mix, or have some space EQ'ed out of it automated at that point so that the guitar can come through without fighting it. I don't think either of the two comments above put this below the bar though. I think this is a great mix, well done. Occasionally it's feeling a bit noisy, but there's a lot going on and you're managing it all really well. YES

First thing that hits me is the kick drum, which I think might be my least favorite sample in here, because it lacks really any body, so I'm off to a bad impression here. It doesn't really fill out any more than that. We have all this rich tonality everywhere else in the mix, and then kind of a toy kick drum that's not giving the mix the support it needs to be successful, especially with this kind of 80s feel going on. I really enjoy the playfulness of the piece from an arrangement standpoint, but I am going to echo prophetik above that I feel like every section here is sort of a riff on the same theme, even though the source material has a lot more to work with, and there are a lot of imaginative ideas that could be poured into this. Because of that, I feel like I'm listening to the same 15-20 seconds of music over and over again with slightly different interpretation. Even though these interpretations are fun, it's like being told the opening paragraph to a story over and over again with a different character voice each time. That being said, I really like a lot of what's going on in here. It's hard to critique and praise the same element, but I really do love the transitions to different ideas and moods as we go through the piece. All of them seem mostly smooth to me, and the progression from one emotional element to the next left me feeling good listening to it. It just needs more than this one source melody element repeated throughout the piece. You absolutely have the skills to take this to the net level. NO

Look man, if Billie Eilish can make an entire career on barebones tracks with some muttering female voices in there so can you. I'm into this interpretation. I think the sources are used plenty, and I think the mix, though maybe a touch repetitive, has a very particular vibe that makes it all make sense to my musical brain. Could you make more variation here? Sure. Could we deviate from the central Ab/G? Yes. But modern music, especially the kind of music pop that this is modeled after, literally has done away with choruses and prechoruses in favor of taking maybe 2 chord changes and repeating them forever with different ornamentation, which is happening here. The Ab/G *is* the vibe here. The fact that I wasn't bored hearing it for almost 4 minutes makes it a feature, not a bug for me. Buuuuuuuuut yeah we're pretty clear on our guidelines about sampling the actual track, so that's gotta get cleaned up. Based on what you demonstrated here production wise, I don't think you'll have an issue figuring out how to make that your own while still very clearly calling back to the original. yes

Man, wild opening. I liked it. Overall a great piece, but vocals production makes this a no for me. Female vocal lead is missing some serious frequency range. It needs to be RE-EQed and fit better into the mix in the beginning here. It might be a mic quality issue, acutally, where it'll be difficult to get that data in there; it's hard for me to hear. But it's coming in very dry, with a lot of data in the high mids (1k hz) and not much else. A good performance, but it can use some treatment in production. Male vocals at 1:45 also need to be re-mixed. This sounds like it was sung into a SM7B with a podcast preset turned on. Overcompressed with too much in the midrange, creating that podcaster sound. More high end, less mids. Get this to sit better on top of the mix. This compounds when the vocals come together at 2:35. The EQ/mix of the two vocals together sounds very harsh, which masks your otherwise very good performance. 2nd entrance of female only at 3:15 sounds better than the beginning, but it might be because it's not as isolated and we have some verb/delay to fatten it up. I focused a lot on the vocal here because the rest of it really sounds nice to me. The bass could have a scoop at 400hz. The kick drum could be a little less compressed/better hits. But mostly the band is well done. 4:06 double vocal also harsh/not passable for me. Now it sounds like we have a 3 part harmony (or maybe an instrument is doubling it there?) But again, the eq/mixing of the two is so off that it's hard to get past it. I want to emphasize again that the PERFORMANCES ARE GREAT, which is not always the case in remixes. Really enjoy the breakdown at 5:20. I was a little confused here trying to figure out whether the organ or the acoustic doodling was the main part here, and I think you should pan them to different sides (not hardpanned, but give them room). This helps them seem like they're talking to each other instead of fighting with each other. This is too good of a piece for me to let the vocal mixing go. It needs some really focused attention on the vocals to make sure they sit in the right place with the right freqs. Since we have a lot going on here, automation may help you; there's a chance you may have to change the EQs depending on what else is going on here. NO (please resubmit)

The vibes are fresh, salty seawater, and I love me an OCRemix that includes so much live instrumentation. Something that I don't think anyone else has said here: the lead guitar sounds really, really close to the rhythm guitar, which I think makes the lead get lost, and it confuses the ear. MAYBE if the rhythm gtr was really hardpanned to give that lead space in the middle you could get away with it, but even a small setting change on your pedal chain would make for a more distinct standout soloist in there. The content of the solo itself could probably use some melodic variation - performance wise I feel like the player is relying very heavily on the major scale of the key of the piece, and not necessarily following the changes in a way that could make for a more interesting melodic line. The drum kit is really missing some body. I think you can achieve the laid back vibe you're going for here but still make sure that we get a good base on which the whole tune can sit. I was iffy on the tightness of the group as a whole, but given the vibe it can be forgiven and maybe even enhance what's going on. The drum kit though does feel very top heavy, and as a result the whole piece feels top heavy because there's just not much to support it on the low end. I'm cool with it feeling like a beachside band that isn't perfectly mixed, but we're too far away on this. This is really really close and doesn't need a lot of work. I think a little beachy OCR is just what we need, but we're not quite there yet. NO (resubmit)

This opening is legit. Haunting and beautiful. Vocal line is well done. The flute sample really stands in stark contrast to the rest of it, as its not well humanized and of not great quality. Attacks and releases of this sample are really abrupt and stick out really far in the mix because of it. Especially when you have this very clean vocal line, the flute really tanks the feeling. I hear a lot more care taken to humanize and blend the strings in the background, but the lead instrument of the piece doesn't seem to get the same attention and it makes for a sort of anxious, stuttering performance that doesn't allow me to enjoy this otherwise very nice soundscape. I have some similar concerns to what I think are the french horns in the background, where they sort of explode randomly into and out of existence as though the modulation automation had an unnatural spike. The attacks/releases Arrangement wise, I'm also going to say that I don't know if we're passing the bar for interpretation here. Other than the intro and a few embellishments in the flute, we essentially have a 1:1 cover here. I'm sure that an argument could be made subjectively on that point. We have a little key doodling at 1:45 and 2:14 but for the most part this feels very much like the original to me. This would be a really amazing opportunity to reach out to the incredible community of musicians we have at OCR just waiting for someone to hand them a tasty flute part. I would be more inclined to pass this with a better main instrument performance, even considering the weaker interpretation score, but right now for me I can't pass this one. NO